


Blue Dreams

by korik



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Creepy, Death, Disturbing Themes, Drug Addiction, F/M, Lyrium Addiction, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Past Torture, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Surreal, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:16:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4391549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/korik/pseuds/korik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's dead, but with her death, Cullen finds her alive again in blue, blue she gave him when he kissed her cold mouth. She is the lyrium and the lyrium is her.<br/>__________</p><p>I've always wondered why it's never touched on - mages use lyrium like templars do, don't they?<br/>Also, oh man, this is kind of dark, though I suppose to some it may not be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Dreams

Never sleep. Never dream. Never stop.

He had always known before that his nightmares were inescapable, that _nothing_ would ever dare toe that fine, bloody line of red marks being drawn in his back with a broken razor, a mockery of heaven in the way it depicted figures he had sought the attention of, and, better yet, in his mind where no healer could ever touch them. Where he could cradle them close and let them feast on his skin and fuel him from the inside out, breathing flames and smoke.

Had. Past tense.

The slip back was easy. Alcohol wasn't like lyrium, no matter how hard the pariah from Tevinter with his glistening jewels that caught the light and made eyes squint tried to convince him of such. Alcohol, with it's ambers and browns, never blue, _never blue_ , brimming to the rim, promised nothing he didn't already know, burning hot in his stomach and easing away the sharp edges with thick syrup but it never stopped the _bleeding_. He got sick, got ill, and couldn't work, and the work _was all he had left_. It was his promise to her.

Lyrium granted him _relief,_ never made him ill. It let him work, helped him with the unending trials and kissed his mouth and inside his throat with a clarity inflicted through drowning in her blue. Lyrium also brought back _her_ voice – just _there_ , _there_ , winding from wall to wall, bouncing down the hall with the last edges of it always peeling, always blowing away like dust when he was half listening to reports for the notes of blue, feathery ribbons of air he could perceive and _almost_ touch. Almost recall mornings having drowned in the electricity exploding through the roof of his mouth and into his brain to obliterate anything else.

Sleep became a memory, a memory like _her_. A memory that tucked him in and curled all that he was into its embrace, smelling like sunshine and early mornings when the sharpest twang of her brewing tea curled his nose up, and made his skin pebble when her cold toes clasped around the soft tendons of his heels.

He tries not to mouth the words, mouth her song over and over that the lyrium has reminded him of, where people can see him, staring into his reflection from Skyhold's restored colored glass, blue burning instead in his eyes.

_There she is._

That's right. Lyrium put her back in his veins - how could he forget so easily kissing the rim of her mouth framed by ambers and browns, ambers and browns, her broken body bereft of its greens, copper scorching his throat as it passed down and burned white hot in his belly. How could he forget lyrium bound them together, and they worked _together_ to lessen his nightmares?

So when he sobbed into his pillows after finding himself jolted awake, grasping only at fabric and strands where once the ambers and browns had been in his grasp, he turned to the mirror, to blue gazing intently back and knowing all he knew. To watching the mouth form the words over and over, singing when no one else would hear.

 


End file.
